2nd Trial Date Set for C-Murder for Nightclub Shooting

NEW ORLEANS – The rapper sometimes known as C-Murder will be tried a second time on a second-degree murder charge.

A Feb. 11 trial date for Corey Miller was set during a telephone conference with prosecutors and defense attorneys, Judge Martha Sassone said in court Tuesday.

Miller, 36, is accused in the shooting death of Steve Thomas, 16, at a Harvey nightclub on Jan. 12, 2002. The teen used a fake ID to get into the club.

The rapper's 2003 conviction was tossed after Sassone found that prosecutors withheld criminal background information on witnesses from his attorney. The state Supreme Court upheld Sassone's ruling in March 2006, when she set $500,000 bail for Miller and ordered his house arrest. He faces a mandatory life sentence without parole.

Although Miller changed nicknames from "C-Murder" to "C-Miller" after he was charged with murder, the byline for his new novel, "Death Around the Corner," is "Corey Miller a.k.a. C-Murder."

Sassone said she had approved trips that Miller made in July to New York and last week to Mississippi.

Tuesday's hearing was called to discuss a drug test Miller supposedly failed before going to Mississippi to promote his book. But the test, administered by a home incarceration officer, wrongly concluded that Miller had methamphetamine in his urine, officials said.

Follow-up testing in a laboratory confirmed the false positive test result could have been caused by cold medicine that Miller took, Assistant District Attorney Roger Jordan said in court.